David was present at the creation of the personal computer industry, and he had this wonderful insight. He essentially helped create the personal computer magazine industry.

-THE SCRIBE (John Markoff)

The Seer

"There's a fundamental shift taking place, because information is no longer an object that has to be transported. In the digital world, information that traditionally took the form of newspapers, magazines, or books can instantaneously be transported anywhere. The implication is vast. It requires a different value system. How heavy a newspaper is and how much it costs to get it to somebody no longer determines the cover price. Suddenly that cost is zero."

You wouldn't expect that the personal computer would have been invented and commercialized in 1974 by a company of twenty employees called MITS in Albuquerque. You would expect that the personal computer would have come out of the labs at IBM or Xerox PARC. But that's not what happened, and David Bunnell was present at the creation, having left his job as a sixth-grade teacher in the Chicago public schools to find his place in what he perceived to be a new and important industry.

DAVID BUNNELL is founder of PC Magazine, PC World, MacWorld, Personal Computing, and New Media, and is CEO of Upside Magazine.

See Chapter 4 of Digerati:Encounters with the Cyber Elite